Department of Happiness

by Sablesword

Part 2

Tracy still had her
hand out. Iāll explain when you hand it over was the silent message.
Elanor handed her permit over, and Tracy explained: āThatās actually the
problem. Youāve had four unhappiness permits issued already this year, and four
the year before that. And another four permits back two years ago. Thatās the
unofficial limit: Four permits per year. So you see I canāt possibly approve
another permit for you this year.ā

Elanor asked carefully,
āFour permits per year is the unofficial limit?ā

āThatās right,ā Tracy
said brightly. āOfficially itās ten every three years, without a special
variance, but four per year is much easier to implement, and itās how weāve
always done things. Four a year; thatās just the way things are.ā

āButā ā Elanor made
herself fall silent. Sheād dealt with the DOH enough to know the meaning of thatās
just the way things are. Once one of their agents spoke those words, there
was no moving them.

āIām glad you
understand,ā Tracy smiled. āOne more thing: Iāll have Sam escort you over to
J-wing. You clearly need cheering up, but I donāt think weāll need to call an
orderly.ā

Elanor knew herself
trapped. For a wild moment, she imagined making a break for it, and escaping
into the noir sector of the city. Only she then wouldnāt be able to work on her
commission at all. Worse, an escape attempt would fail miserably, and only earn
her the rejection of any further permit applications she might make. She stood
up and forced a smile. āThank you,ā she told Tracy.

#

J-wing looked just as
hospital-like as Elanor remembered, with its wide corridors, pastel walls, and
white ceilings. It also sounded like she remembered, with faint sounds of mad
laughter filtered through beneath the announcements. The sound-insulation here,
while good, was far from perfect. Still, it wasnāt bad, for a free service, and
Elanor had been here any number of times before. While she preferred a paid
provider of cheer-up services, she had often been too short of cash to afford
one.

Elanor stepped out of
the dressing room wearing the skimpy two-piece outfit that everyone but the
pedants called a āteekini.ā A bright red teekini, in this case ā it was what
had come up in her size. In addition, she still wore her moodstone, set in its
collar-necklace, and nothing else. Her feet were bare on the tile floor as she
left the changing room, her creamy soles a contrast to the darkness of her
skin. She let Sam help her up onto a waiting gurney, and thrust hands and feet
through the dilated openings of the stocks. āReady,ā she told the gurneyās
computer.